leading the arts

WOW, some incredible notes from the 1st session.

 Reaching the Lost

 - Great leaders are God’s crash test dummies. You must be willing to test new thing and possibly get hurt in the process.

 - it’ all about others. (if u cut God he bleeds others. If u cut the church, it bleeds themselves. We are called to others, not our own success.

 - the reached is not our priority. We are not paid to baby-sit the children but to find new ones.

  - church is not about the church, but about the lost. What is the one main focus of your church? Feeding the children, or finding the children.

 - most churches die gradually as the focus shifts to maintenance of the children.

 - a good gauge for what your focus is, is where is a majority of your growth coming from. Is most of your growth already churched?

 - children will grow spiritually as they reach out to those who are not yet children or new children.

 - the fig tree was receiving nourishment from the ground but not passing on fruit. Jesus cursed it. Many churches are receiving nourishment but not passing on.

 - Luke 13.6 – vineyard keeper (God) wants to cut down tree that doesn’t produce fruit. Gardener (pastor) is concerned about tree (church). God is concerned about production. Pastors are concerned about the vines. God doesn’t killing unproductive churches. We must pastor the church like God would not like we would. The gardener wanted to baby and stroke a vine that had no intention of producing.

 - the tree you won’t pull up will love you even more for not pulling it up. This makes it even harder to pull it up.

 - much of our attention goes to people who have no intention in producing fruit.

 - Jesus ‘pulled up’ the rich young ruler, because his focus was on himself.

 - when 72 left Jesus he didn’t chase them because they were concerned themselves. Even invited the 12 to leave. Their response… ‘we have nothing else’. This is why He picked them. Their focus wasn’t on their own neediness.

 - Jesus didn’t try to justify Himself. when you begin leading people like God, people will say you don’t love people. U don’t have to justify yourself to anyone.

 - don’t love your unproductive vines at the expense of those who want to thrive.

Paul also taught the second session of the summit. Here are some of his thoughts about quitting.

  -’never quit’ is bad advice. When winners quit. They do it intentionally, strategically and on their own terms.

 - if u r going to stay relevant u r going to have to quit a lot. Churches that were relevant at one time and didn’t quit things that people loved became a relic. (our people won’t encourage u to quit things.

 - the most common form of quitting is reactive quiting. Running from something rather to something.

 - 1 kings 19 – Elijah was a reactive quitter.

 1. the more u explain reactive quitting the less sense it makes to yourself. It lack rhyme or reason.

 - God could care less about your rationalizations. He ignores them.

 2. there are times that God will not react to your reasons and will continue to ask the right question. (how many times have we done this as parents) sometimes he wants us to repeat the excuses enough to realize how wrong they are.

 3. What ever you choose to do has a price tag and you don’t get to set the price, but u will have to pay for it. God will not tailor your dream down to what you are willing to pay.  You can trade for a lesser dream, but not pay less for a lesser version of a dream.

 4. when you quit reactively you must go back the way u came. You must pay face if you quit and go back. Your going to pay one or the other.

 - moses had to go back to pharoah.

 - jonah had to go back to ninovah.

 - paul sent josephis fact to his owner.

 5. Although u have quit, God still talks to u like He owns u. Moses was a serial quitter. He quit all the time, and God seemed to ignore it.